Looking straight off the coast of Laguna Beach on the Florida panhandle, the perspective is approximately south-southwest and there is no land for perhaps 800 miles, not even an island.
These pictures were taken just after 5:15 PM Central Time on September 26th, 2016 with a Nikon Coolpix S7000 which has a 20x optical zoom lens. I have another camera with a 35x lens, but unfortunately I did not have it with me that day.
So we see billowing smoke, and we see a hovering helicopter. Standing on Front Beach Road, we are probably about 15 feet or so above the water level. Of course, the helicopter is certainly much higher above the water than that.
But what could be causing the smoke?
Either a boat is on fire, and we cannot see it because it is over the horizon, since the earth is a globe.
Or maybe there is a submarine on fire, because we all know the earth is really flat. LO-effing-L.
Each of the images below are linked to the high resolution originals.
I searched around for a report of the incident, but could not find one. However the NTSB database and the Coast Guard site seem to be behind getting things posted. I will look again when time affords.